I'm surprised they haven't moved back to being in person. That seemed like one of the core benefits to companies, grinding it out with a set of like minded people who can all benefit in one place. Hearing you made a weaker network from YC than you would have liked is concerning, especially when you can find most of YC's wisdom on free videos. Network is one of the primary reasons I had applied and interviewed with YC a few times, both for investor networking and for founder networking and had presumed that was one of their main benefits.

I agree with people here saying YC attempting to scale seems to be hurting the overall experience. Hopefully with their recommitment to early stage companies only, this changes for the better. Their earlier wins set them up as the pre-eminent accelerator and diluting that experience those earlier companies had seems like a bad idea to me.

They have access to metrics I don't have though (obviously) so who knows I may be totally off base.